He’d heard a woman screaming, and it hadn’t been in his dreams. Cass. He leapt out of bed and ran across the hallway to her room, but the bed was empty. He heard sobbing coming from his art studio. Whatever was she doing in there at this time of night? Rory ran down the hall. Flinging the door back, he saw her sitting on the floor holding his latest painting of Ryan. Her tears had dropped onto it, now smearing the paint and sending it streaming down the canvas. It looked ruined, but for some reason he couldn’t be angry with her. “Cass, what are you doing in here, honey?” She looked around at him. Her face already puffed and her eyes red from crying. He got down on his knees and put his arms around her. “It’s almost like it’s really him and that he’s come back from the grave,” she sobbed. “It’s taken me all this time to get the courage to paint this. I didn’t think I could do it, but then I thought if I didn’t do it soon, and with each year that passed, I might forget how he really looked, and I’d never capture the true Ryan ever again.”
